Diets Reviewed To Help You Lose Weight

Category: motivation

Scales Are Stuck!

Do you feel the scales have “got it in for you”? Sometimes, the scales stay stuck in the same place or even go the wrong way, despite your best efforts! It can be hard not to get discouraged and to think “Why am I not losing weight” or “this is not working for me!”. It’s only a step away then to giving up the diet altogether and thinking “I just can’t do this!”.

Tips to Help

Some people are slow movers, stick with it, it WILL work.

It happens. Some weeks you lose a lot and others very little or you gain a bit. Try averaging it out, so if you lost 2 Kg the first week and none the second, well, that’s an average of 1 Kg a week, that’s 2 pounds a week, which is a good steady loss.

Think about what else is happening with your body. For women, is it hormonal related? You may be retaining water and then you’ll have a bigger weight loss in a few days time. Are you stressed? Maybe you are constipated and holding onto a bowel movement?

Are you weighing at the same time of day and wearing the same clothes? I don’t actually own a set of bathroom scales, I use my daughter’s and have no intention of stripping down to the buff in her bathroom to use them. I also don’t use the scales every day or at the same time, so I use the result as a guide. If it’s generally down over a few days, that’s fair enough.

Check your body measurements. Sometimes, the weight may not go down, especially if you are also exercising, because you are building muscle, which “weighs more” (technically, is denser) than fat so you are getting slimmer, even if you weigh the same or a bit more. A quick check is to see whether your clothes are looser, if so, you are winning, even if the scales are not moving.

If you think you are cheating, even a little bit, try drinking more water or eating a low calorie high fiber food, such as celery, when hunger pangs hit. “Just a little bit” DOES hurt. You can keep feeling full for longer by drinking hot drinks or making your own high fiber soup or even just making a hot savory drink with a stock cube in a pint of water or a low sodium bouillon base.

Remember, while water has no calories it does have weight, so drinking a full glass of water just before you step on the scales, may affect the weight shown.

Stick With It

Sometimes our inner child gets fed up with the health kick and tries to get us to eat “just a tiny bit” or “once won’t hurt”. Remind that inner child of the health reasons you found for going on a diet or the treat you have planned when you reach your target weight or how you will feel going to an event in your new dudes!

Dormant Butt Syndrome or Old-Guy Butt Syndrome

No matter how fit you are, you may be suffering from dormant butt syndrome, especially if your job entails a lot of sitting. Also called Old-Guy Butt syndrome, it refers to tight hip flexors (in your hip) and possibly weak gluteal muscles (your butt) which can cause pain and weakness in the hips and knees. This can happen even in runners and others you wouldn’t think have left ANY muscle in their body untrained! This can lead to hamstring injuries, back pain, hip pain and knee injuries that could lead to surgery. It can also happen in women after childbirth.

I know this site is about dieting and weight loss but there are two major reasons this article is here. First of all, if your hips are painful, it’s difficult even to walk, never mind run and the loss of that ability to move can lead to weight gain. Removing the pain in the hips and knees caused by tight hip flexors could make moving around an awful lot easier and help you keep your weight in check. Secondly, there is a muscle (psoas) that is close to the hip flexors and that is kept under constant tension when the hip flexors are tight. This muscle is normally tightened only when you are under threat – the fight or flight syndrome – but if the hip flexors are tight, the muscular imbalance in your body keeps it under constant tension, causing stress. Stress releases a hormone – cortisol – that contributes to weight gain. So, two reasons for this article being on this site and two ways of helping your body remove that excess weight dragging you down.

This Way Of Eating – WOE – Week 2

I started back onto this diet, the 800 calories for 8 weeks Blood Sugar Diet on 31 December 2016. I don’t bother with New Year’s Eve and all the cake from Christmas was gone, so there were no real temptations to hold me back from starting again. I knew that Christmas week had reversed the weight loss, so I didn’t weigh myself for a couple of days and was relieved to find that I was “Only” just over 1 kilogram (between 2 and 3 pounds) heavier than my lightest weight before Christmas. That meant I was back over the 70Kg weight level but not so far that it was dispiriting.

Support Group

I found a great support group on Facebook. It’s very useful to have support when you are working on something like weight loss or even weight gain or body building, come to that. Getting the support and encouragement from a positive group of people on the same journey as you is very helpful and motivating. They even have their own abbreviations and language, so that WOE is shorthand for “Way of Eating” and NSV is a “non-scale victory”, such as being able to fit into a size smaller piece of clothing. There is also a shorthand way for describing which week of the diet you are on and whether this is your first “round” or a subsequent round. It is recommended that you take a break between rounds. The group suggests that it is possible to lose 10 per cent of your body weight in each round of dieting, so that someone weighing 100 kg could lose 10 Kg over the 8 weeks. This would be great.

Weight Loss

My weight loss has not been as high since I started back onto the program, probably because I am eating more fiber but maybe not taking in enough water to move it through quickly. But I HAVE Lost just over 1 kg in weight (just over 2 pounds) and I have also lost half an inch from around my abdomen. Two victories to celebrate!

Continuing Weight Loss

I am going to buy the diet book that goes with this WOE in order to gain the most possible information for remaining healthy and losing weight quickly. Why? I don’t have diabetes but my grandmother had Type II and one sister has it. That means I may be at risk for developing it and I would rather not risk blindness, limb amputation, and nerve damage. Also, I KNOW I need to lose weight and this has so far been a very useful exercise in moving that stubborn belly fat!